Chase Budinger, Friends With Benefits

Chase Budinger’s NBA career is off to a good start. He was a big part of Houston’s defeat of the Spurs on Tuesday night. That Daryl Morey knows what he’s doing.Â Watching Budinger showcase his skills against San Antonio reminded me of an interview I did with him at the Chicago Pre-Draft Combine. I never had an excuse to post the footage until now.

One of the features of the Combine, and a contributing factor to the Spurs’ selection of DeJuan Blair, is the ability of front offices to interview dozens of individuals from the draft class. The Spurs conducted interviews with a large number of the participants on hand, and one such interview was with DeJuan Blair.

Blair was slated to go well before the 37th pick, but, you know, when he’s right there in the same hotel as you, why not spend 30 minutes with the guy? Take 30 minutes to assess, in the crazy circumstance of an unexpected slide, the player’s personality, whether he’s a good fit in locker room, if he’s intelligent, and all that. The Spurs took that approach with DeJuan Blair.

But what do front offices ask players in these interviews? What questions allow them to unveil the man behind the mask? This is what I asked Chase Budinger, who was interviewed by San Antonio, but he is not referring to that interview in this clip.

An aside: The video was shot by Ryan Miller of The Orange Segment. Ryan was a great friend to 48MoH at the camp, and went on to enjoy fifteen minutes of fame when the people at Nike purloined his LeBron Got Dunked on Video.

So that’s my voice to the left, Ryan with the camera, and Chase with the answers.

http://myspurslink.blogspot.com Robby

He seems like a nice guy and he played well against us too… But DeJuan is the Man!